Making your own lathe

Following an earlier post about our new little spear and jackson oil free compressor, this blog has been hit with a continual stream of visitors google searching this exact topic. Our new Spear and Jackson compressor I think there is something about this unit that appeals to the compressed air new-comer. The plastic body has that look of low maintenance and user friendliness - the same hallmarks perhaps that would turn a veteran towards a more industrial looking machine. In hindsight, the spear and jackson is still meeting expectations. It never boasted about having any sort of serious capacity but its great for small short bursts of air - cleaning down tools witha spray from the air wand, inflating tyres, driving a small brad nailer, it all works. As compressors tend to be, its still a pretty noisy thing when its running and I guess it never promised not to be.

Recently I found a bottle of homemade wood ebonizer that had been stored for a few months. What was once a brialliantly clear solution had turned itself into a murky mess with a hard crystalline crust on the top and a fine powdery sediment on the bottom. The crust was so hard I had to shake the bottle to get the liquid out thus stirring up all the sediment and making the solution far less attractive and I suspect likely to cause unwanted rust stains. See recipe for homemade wood ebonizer I am gussing I've used too much rust and too little vinegar here. Next experiment will be to take a small quantity of this solution and dissolve it into a bottle of vinegar, then checking if the end result is still potent when applied to the timber we want to turn black.